Amazon Releases Election Heat Map

Why did Amazon create the 2012 Election Heat Map?

Amazon customers, as we know, read widely and often buy books that don’t necessarily fit their own views. Books aren’t votes, and a map of book purchases can reflect curiosity as much as commitment, but we hope our 2012 Election Heat Map will provide one way to follow the changing political conversation across the country during this election season.

How do we calculate the red and blue percentages on our Heat Map?

Our 2012 Election Heat Map colors each state according to the percentage of red and blue book purchases, based on shipping address, that have been made on Amazon.com during the past 30 days. We take the top-selling political books on Amazon.com and categorize them as “red,” “blue,” or neutral. We classify books as red or blue if they have a political leaning made evident in book promotion material and/or customer classification, such as tags. We compute percentages, updated daily, for each state and the US by comparing the 250 best-selling blue books during the time period against the 250 best-selling red books during the same time period, including new book launches. If the same book title has multiple formats (paperback, Kindle books and Audible Audio), each format has a separate sales calculation. The list only includes paid, not free Kindle books. All orders during the period are given equal weighting in the calculation. States with higher percentages of red or blue purchases are colored more darkly, and states with an even 50-50 split are colored neutral.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? Not many. It does call to mind the theory that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. If this is so, and reading is seen as a hallmark of intelligence, I wonder why such a strong majority of book purchases involve “conservative” topics. Are liberals really that interested in knowing what we think? And if not, does this mean that conservatives are reading a lot more than people give them credit for? In either case, does the preponderance of “red” books show a general trend toward interest in those topics, and will we see this reflected in election results?

I wouldn’t put any money on it. But it’s an interesting conversation starter nonetheless.

2012-08-23 09:09:36

Source: http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=35030